Torre della Garisenda, Medieval tower in Bologna, Italy

The Torre della Garisenda is a square brick tower built around 1109 by the Garisendi family. It now stands 48 meters high, leaning 4 degrees with its top offset 3.22 meters from vertical. The shaft is pierced by small holes and a few rectangular windows, and horizontal iron bands run around it at intervals. At its base stands a light-colored stone statue of a bearded man in a tall flat-topped hat, raising his right hand and holding a staff topped with a curled ornament.

The Garisendi, a prosperous Guelph family of money changers, built the tower in masonry around 1109, originally about sixty metres high. Early settlement of the weak foundation soil caused the lean, and Giovanni Visconti had it cut down to forty-eight metres. In the Napoleonic era it passed to the Ranuzzi, then the Malvezzi Campeggi, and on 27 August 1904 to Raimondo Franchetti, before reaching the municipality of Bologna.

The name comes from the Garisendi family, who commissioned the structure in the 12th century to display their influence in the city. Today the tower serves as an important landmark for visitors walking through the narrow streets of the old town and looking for a meeting point.

The tower stands right at a crossroads of major streets in the historic center and is easy to reach on foot. Due to ongoing safety works access to the interior is currently not possible, but the exterior view already offers a lasting impression.

Dante mentions the tower in his Divine Comedy and compares its tilt to the giant Antaeus bending over him. This literary connection makes it one of the few structures recorded in one of the most famous works of world literature.